Reading “Caritas in Veritate”: Notes on the Introduction

What does it mean for love to be in truth? And why should it matter whether it is?

By my lights, the central claim of this introductory section is that, just as the loving articulation of truth makes it credible and appealing, so it is the truthful proclamation and practice of the nature of love that gives caritas its substance:

… practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of love without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, love is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis. (sec. 4)

And again:

Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present. (sec. 5)

For us to put love in truth is, then, for us to reveal love as the same sort of thing that truth is: not an optional affair or something that is reserved for special occasions or the private sphere, but rather something that is in the essence of the human person as such, and is the defining characteristic of rightly ordered human society. Just as thought and speech that do not aim at truth are not really thought or speech at all, so communal life that is not marked by love can never be a genuine coming-together; hence confining love to what we ordinarily think of as the practice of “charity” (this is the reason why I have often changed the translation of the Latin caritas from “charity” to “love”) means treating as secondary that which is the primary ingredient of authentic human development.

It’s important to see how radical a claim this is. Since the Modern period, we’ve tended to think of human beings fundamentally as individuals and as society as a sort of convenience, held together with the bonds of mutual self-interest and ordered to the protection of individual rights. By contrast, what Benedict is proposing here is that it is by and toward love – love! – that public life is ordered, and that it is the neglect of love’s demands that stands at the root of our societal ills. The force of this proposal is brought out quite clearly in sec. 6, where love is distinguished from mere justice, and “relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion” are set in contrast to “rights and duties” – the latter, of course, being the primary concepts of post-Enlightenment political and moral thought. (Cf. also sec. 9, where “technical progress and relationships of utility” are given a similar treatment, in contrast to the “love that overcomes evil with good”.) The terms in which political relationships are commonly understood are incomplete; they pay only lip service to the commandment to love.

Finally, there is the insistence in sec. 7 that such love must manifest itself in a concern for the common good, and not just the good of oneself or those close to one. Obviously the question of what form that concern ought to take is a challenging one (the Church “does not have technical solutions to offer”, Benedict notes in sec. 9), but the crucial points are that love is meant to be a political affair, not merely a private one, and that a commitment to the common good that is animated by Christian love will have “greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have”. The task of this encyclical is to shed light on what an authentic human development, one guided by divine love and so ordered toward shaping the earthly city in the image of the city of God, ultimately entails.

This initial section was dense enough that I feel like we could be going through the document paragraph by paragraph, rather than a chapter at a time. What did you all think? What is there that’s confusing? Illuminating? Perplexing? Challenging? Otherwise worthy of comment? Over to you, partners in this endeavor.

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43 Responses to Reading “Caritas in Veritate”: Notes on the Introduction

Agreed, its definitely a paragraph by paragraph sort of document. For what its worth, I think the line of thinking developed in paragraphs 3 and 4 is also interesting, and relates nicely to the critique of modernity discussed above.

“Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.”

So its not just that we view individuals as social atoms with rights and duties, or even bearing utility values, but also that we degrade our emotional lives quite considerably in the process… And that divorced from real dia-logos, our emotional lives are up for reinterpertation that can completely subvert their relationship to the truth and to others (both of which are essentially intertwinned all throughout.).

One other stray thought: There are some major and obvious resonances with Buber’s project going on throughout, though I think Benedict has actually expanded it considerably here by uniting it with the critique of our emotional space and political life. It’s not just that by turning away from actual engagement we transform others into “it”s, but also ourselves and position in the world. I am just as much up for reimagining as are other people if I take an objective stance towards others and a disengaged stance towards our relationship…

A very good commentary. Two obsevations – First, many people including far too many Catholics tend to treat justice as obligatory, charity as optional. It seems to me that this always ends up short-changing justice, not just charity. Thus Pope Benedict’s emphasis on the primacy of charity is most important. Second, yes love is political if by political we mean simply public and not private. But let’s not make the mistake of identifying the common good only with what is mandated by law, which tends to channel all action for the common good into the narrow arena of lobbying for laws and participation in partisan politics. Individuals such as Mother Theresa and organizations such as Catholic Workers and many pro-life groups which are dedicated to the assistance of pregnant women have accomplished more in love for the common good than all lawmakers and politicians of our modern age put together.

So its not just that we view individuals as social atoms with rights and duties, or even bearing utility values, but also that we degrade our emotional lives quite considerably in the process… And that divorced from real dia-logos, our emotional lives are up for reinterpertation that can completely subvert their relationship to the truth and to others (both of which are essentially intertwinned all throughout.).

Yes – I had written more about this in an earlier draft of the post, and the way I put it then was that since truth is a public affair and so essentially involves community and dialogue, the perfection of truth is necessarily bound up with the perfection of love. And you’re absolutely right that Benedict is drawing a clear parallel between sentimentality and the compartmentalization of love and relativism about the truth; in each case it is our capacity to view others fully as persons that is put at risk.

One of the lines I tripped on – though I’m stumbling all over – is the following in paragraph 2: “charity … practised in the light of truth … help[s] give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasiveness and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living.” Wait a second: credible, persuasive, authentic – you don’t often hear about “truth” needing help with these adjectives. Maybe the context provided in the sentence – “in the practical setting of social living” – is the operative phrase? Because in theory, I’d think truth is to credible as water is to wet. But in practice, I don’t want to “settle” on a truth that doesn’t make me feel wholly human – and that requires love. Or is the larger context – truth grounded in Christ, defined in para 1 as “found … by adherence to God’s plan for” each person – more significant? Because in that case, you really need to work to convince modern people that Christian truth is credible.

At any rate, I have a feeling that as this reading proceeds, it may be helpful to keep a close eye on how the term “truth” is being understood (it certainly would be to me, anyway).

In the intorduction there seems to be some central themes of Benedicts Pontificate

They are
Truth
The danger of Relativism
Faith and Reason

ALso there is quite an Trinitarian Aspect to all this

I find the most striking eleemnt and one I think we have to struggle with is the how Justice islinked to truth and charity

This part struck me

“First of all, justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it.Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us.”

In other wors before we get to the question of what is Charity (as in the way most people think of the term) We have to deal with Justice or what is owed which sets the baseline as it were.

So Chaity involves a person in his all his actions . That the economics actions of people, countries, buiness can not be ignored nor the action of the State in which we are all called to be a part of.

Yes, but only in theory – for can’t we all think of any number of cases where people don’t manage to grant the truth their credence, for one reason or another? (Hence: “… you really need to work to convince modern people that Christian truth is credible.”) I think Benedict’s point is that it is only by proclaiming the truth in a loving way, and so revealing it as integrally bound up with love, that it can be widely enough acknowledged.

Paragraph by paragraph reading may not be very enlightening without some general perspective on the nature of social encyclicals and especially of this one’s relationship to Populorum Progression. The point of departure itself has to be assessed. Paul VI talked of social thinking and action as being “led by justice accompanied by charity” whereas Benedict talks about truth (emphasis on doctrine etc.), then charity, then justice. The effect is of course to blunt the justice emphasis of the Prophets, Jesus’ Kingdom preaching. Vatican II, Paul VI and Liberation Theology –crushed by Benedict in the name of Truth and of various dreaded errors that he read into its thinking — at a time when John Paul II was giving his moral authority to Reagan’s support of the Contras in Nicaragua and ignoring the situations that led to the martydom of Oscar Romero.

The effect is of course to blunt the justice emphasis of the Prophets, Jesus’ Kingdom preaching.

So by saying that justice is, as was quoted in a comment above, “inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it”, and that justice is “the primary way of charity”, Benedict is secretly telling us that justice doesn’t really matter? Sorry, but that’s a baffling way to read the text.

Good points by Spirt of Vatican II. Taking a step back and putting this encyclical in context, would suggest another historical point:
a) when Rerum Novum came out; it addressed social & economic inequalities – much of which came about because of the Industrial Revolution. Parts of the world had been living with the negative moral impact of this revolution for almost 100 years;
b) would suggest that Caritas in Veritate follows this parallel – the growing disparity economically, democratically, socially between significant economic centers and the rest of the world has transformed the “old” notion of nation states; 1st/2nd/3rd world descriptions; have and have-not language. The centers of finance, innovation, creation are not nations but major regions such as US East Coast, coast of California, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghia, western Europe, London. These centers have more in common than nation status. E.G. 16% of China (Beijg and Shanghia) produce 80% of their wealth, development – 60% of China lives on less than 2 dollars a day. The Shanghia middle class lives better than most US middle class folks. But, the disparity is immense.
c) would also suggest that there is an international emotion scale that reveals that Asia (example above) has hope; the Islamic world suffers humiliation (they have no participation in these huge economic centers); and the West lives in fear as things change; disparities grow; creating international resentment, unrest, terrorism.
So, on the one hand see this encyclical as remarkable but if posed to an economist, financial guru, or world statesman, its language and examples would seem out of date and behind the curve.

Context is importan. Archbishop Dolan gave a talk recently to teachers of Cathecumens. He noted how the Pew study showed that people were ok with God and Jesus but not with the Church. Dolan said there can be no Jesus without the church. This is a very sad way to relate to the study. How about changing the way the official church acts that turns people off.
Same with an encyclical, great as it may be. What is the context?

“6. “Caritas in veritate” is the principle around which the Church’s social doctrine turns, a principle that takes on practical form in the criteria that govern moral action. I would like to consider two of these in particular, of special relevance to the commitment to development in an increasingly globalized society: justice and the common good.”

This could sound as if the justice language of Paul VI is being subjected to a higher language of caritas in veritate, a quite new first principle in the context of social teaching, as merely one application of it.

Is it good is a social encyclical to present justice as a criterion of moral action rather than a prophetic response to the cry of the poor as it was in Paul VI and the liberation theology he inspired?.

” Charity goes beyond justice,”

I cannot find any place in Scripture where this contrast is drawn. Paul VI does no draw it either. He says social concern and action are led by justice accommpanied by charity. The biblical use of the word justice goes beyond the mere arrangements of “ius” in society.

The task of justice is subordinated to the practice of the Gift, “the logic of giving and forgiving”, in the lofty angelistic style of Communio, Balthasar and Marion etc., who notoriously have nothing to say about justice and peace issues. Such a subordination is not in the Gospel. Consider the place given to the topic of rich and poor in St Luke, from the Magnificat on.

” If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1],”

Here is what Paul VI wrote in the passage footnoted at this point:

“Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress, it follows that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. The recent Council reiterated this truth: “God intended the earth and everything in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created goods should flow fairly to all.” (20) NOTE — UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF JUSTICE AND IN THE COMPANY OF CHARITY

“All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation. Redirecting these rights back to their original purpose must be regarded as an important and urgent social duty.

“23. “He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (21) Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.” (22) These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.

“No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life. In short, “as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good.” When “private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another,” it is for the public authorities “to seek a solution to these questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social groups.” (23)”

What Paul VI says is charity cannot be genuine without justice. Benedict puts the accent on justice cannot be genuine without charity. He says: “charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.””

Alien to Scripture here and to Paul VI is the idea that the hunger and thirst for justice needs some superaddition in order to have ” theological and salvific value”.

I cannot find any place in Scripture where this contrast [between justice and charity] is drawn.

How about the parable of the workers in the fields?

What Paul VI says is charity cannot be genuine without justice. Benedict puts the accent on justice cannot be genuine without charity.

Yes, but that doesn’t contradict the teaching of Paul VI at all, especially given the passages quoted above which say exactly the thing about justice being required for charity that you here cite Paul VI as saying.

“Justice cannot be genuine without charity” — a different idea surely? I don’t remember Paul VI putting that idea at the forefront of his teaching, or indeed putting it forward at all.

Benedict has always promoted the latter idea, or something like it, to cast doubt on the Liberation Theology led by a passion for justice.

Paul VI rather sees justice in the biblical sense of the Prophets and the Sermon on the Mount (which is not the niggledty tit-for-tat pseudo-justice of the Pharisees, the discontented laborers or the elder son in the parable of the Prodigal Son addressed to the Pharisees in Luke 15). This justice is pretty much assured to be accompanied by charity in action, in Paul VI’s vision, and does not need to be further justified or quizzed as to its genuineness.

What I mean is that if one thinks of Justice in the sense most prevalent in the Bible and in Justice & Peace thinking (and in Liberation Theology) one does not feel the need to issue anxious warnings that Justice is inauthentic unless guided by Charity (and Truth).

Consider if someone in a document on the sacredness of human life were to say: Concern for life is admirable but it must be rooted in charity or it is inauthentic. Would they not by that very token be somehow undercutting the sacredness of life, making it contingent on a higher consideration?

For one thing, I’ve got to say that I find it a bit perplexing to have a defender of liberation theology accusing the pope of an improper break with tradition. And I don’t intend any disrespect to lib. theo. by saying that – it’s just perplexing.

But for another, and pretty much just to repeat myself, I see no reason at all why the claim that justice requires love should to be taken to imply a denigration of justice; by a similar token, anyone who reacted as you proposed in that last comment to the (obviously true!) claim that concern for life is less than perfect unless it’s rooted in and ordered toward love would sound pretty silly to me. I think Benedict would say that justice in the sense of the Sermon on the Mount just is justice perfected by love, and that it’s exactly this that makes human justice pale in comparison.

But human justice, the cry of the poor, is what the Prophets and Jesus too were concerned with; they did not say it pales in comparison with divine justice. OT commandments of social justice are followed by the utterance “I am the Lord” — God identifies himself as the one who upholds justice and a burning hunger and thirst for justice is indistinguishable from the love of God.

Benedict is to my mind guilty of tone-deafness to much of the biblical vision of Vatican II and Paul VI, and this is clear in the way he and John Paul II reacted to Liberation Theology. I would not accuse him of an improper break with tradition but with a stubborn fidelity to traditions that needed to be outgrown — the traditions of Christendom insofar as they were at odds with the deeper purpose of Christianity — nothing new there, the same accusation could be made against Gregory XVI and Pius IX.

Benedict is of course well aware of this accusation, it has dogged him for a long, long time. His effort to recuperate Populorum Progressio is in part a last desperate effort at self-justification, at securing an honorable place in history. There are some muddled and embarrassing pages in his Jesus book in the same vein, where he assures us that the prophet Isaiah’s vision of world peace is obsolete, since it did not come true, and that Jesus brings instead a kingdom which does not concern earthly justice and peace in any direct way but rather consists in — bringing us God.

Thanks for doing this, John. You’re going to be a great colleague. (And I tend to agree with the posts that suggest a broader brush is better.)

I want to make one broad observation, and then relate it to the very helpful dialogue between Spirit and John. The first section seems to me to demonstrate right away that Benedict is doing something quite new here. Consider, from paragraph 2: “Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine. … it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones).” This utter refusal of Niebuhrianism and of a Jesus who teaches a love-ethic applicable only to individuals but not society is striking, But consider this shocking amplification from paragraph 7: “Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God.” Wow. Note what is being said here: work for the common good of the earthly city, if done in (truthful) love, “builds up” and “prefigures” the city of God, which is “the goal of history.” This is the opposite of a “spiritualization” of the gospel – it’s radically incarnational – though (importantly) it does not substitute earthly for heavenly. Rather, it says “God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven” – that is, the earthly city comes to be con-formed to God.

Some commentators misunderstand Benedict because of his familiar attacks on liberation theology. But Benedict has a profoundly social eschatology (see Spe Salvi), one that (in this document) he is not afraid to apply fully to the social order. In this way, I think Benedict is radicalizing, not relativizing, the commitments of Paul VI/lib theo. The emphasis on “charity” as not an add-on to justice, but a prerequisite for justice, creates a much stiffer critique of our social order.

However, Spirit is right in that such Balthasar or Marion-esque appropriations of gift are dangerously abstract if they are not translated into practice. (I think Benedict does this in many ways later in the encyclical, but the social magisterium also exists to push US to do so in various ways in our own contexts) Further, they are misinterpreted if they are turned into abstract diatribes against propositional atheism or agnosticism (i.e. “Truth”). The comment about how Benedict thinks truth needs to be “authenticated” should act as a nudge against those who focus entirely on enforcing right thinking. Right thinking is important, sure, but right practice even more so. As an example, I think Wendell Berry’s account of economics sparkles as one example of a gift economy that is also just – yet read some of Berry’s explicitly theological ideas, and one will find them very far from ideal. So, does Wendell Berry have the truth, if his practice and articulation of practice is far closer to “charity in truth” that someone who has doctrinally correct ideas about Jesus? I don’t mean to make some cheap shot against “doctrine” here. I mean to say that Benedict is misread if his repeated insistance on “truth” (and on God) is REDUCED to correct intellectual assent to propositions.

So, I think John and Spirit might not be in conflict, IF one recognizes that Benedict’s emphasis on “God” does NOT imply some sort of spiritual/material dualism, whereby an emphasis on “God” means that somehow we slight our (material) “neighbor.” Benedict’s point is to overcome the spiritual/material dualism, as is MOST clearly seen in the earthly/heavenly city comment.

Benedict is not pulling back the social teachings here. He’s pushes them into more radical territory. To put it in pithy terms: Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin have won here.

Great points. I also thought Benedict was especially strong in rejecting Niebuhrian realism. He comes across as an Augustinian idealist at many points. Since caritas is not superadditum to justice (as you pointed out), it should be part of the creational order. The political and economic implications are wide-ranging. While establishment capitalists, like Weigel and Fr. Sirico, would certainly call for individual Christian charity, it seems they’ve adopted a de facto Nieburhianism regarding social virtue. I don’t know of a more charitable way to interpret Novak’s mystifying line about pursuing “methods” to defeat human sin.

What surprised me about the encyclical, and what many others seem to ignore, is just how explicitly practical Benedict gets in his economic sections (I’m jumping the gun here). But Benedict’s integration of love and justice requires practical policy. Love is not merely for the future age; the Church embodies that perfect caritas now and works to employ it, however imperfectly, in the present age.

I really don’t get this attempt to pit justice against charity (love) and Pope Paul against Pope Benedict. The two great commandments are love of God and of neighbor. Love includes justice, but goes beyond justice. And I don’t see liberation theology as compatible with either love or justice as it is based on hatred of the rich and the desire to do them injury up to and including killing them.

I just want to say, in my reading of this Introduction, the use of Justice and Charity is that all people are due justice because of the inherent dignity of each human person. Justice is giving each person what is due them on this basis. Charity, on the other hand, involves something higher – giving the other person something not necessarily DUE them, but something in addition, something of ourselves, out of love. Maybe I’m wrong, but I see this in terms of the difference between contract and covenant, for example a marriage where there is a pre-nuptial agreement (contract that protects each party should the relationship end) vs a marriage where both parties give each other their total selves, in true communion and trust. In a contract both parties can expect justice. But in covenant, love for the other is the highest value. Of course justice is expected in this situation but more than justice, true self-giving.

Many thanks to those others who’ve weighed in on the justice vs. (or not vs.) love question; I agree enthusiastically with most of what’s been said in the latest batch of comments.

One thing I should admit, though, is that the idealist (or dare I say anti-realist?) aspects of some of this are a bit challenging for me to swallow – but I imagine we’ll be able to talk about that in more depth when we get to the later chapters

David C., thanks for your thought-provoking comments. Already we have had many quite subtle and difficult issues raised — I wonder if anyone will have the intellectual stamina to continue like this through the entire Encyclical paragraph by paragraph…

Btw, Kirt Higdon, Liberation Theology — as represented by Gutierrez. Sobrino, L. Boff etc. — is not based on hatred of the rich — any more than Jesus’ “Woe to you rich!” is so based.

Spirit of Vatican II, justice is important, but remember what Christ said to Judas when he lamented the woman’s annointing of Christ’s feet, “you’ll always have the poor with you.” As we learn from the negative example of Judas, justice can be used at the expense of caritas. The error of liberation, too often has been an error of Judas.

“You’ll always have the poor with you” is a mistransation. “The poor are always (pantote) to hand” is not a statement on the future of humanity but on the failure of Judas to recognize a special kairos. It means, “You can always do good to the poor, but you won’t have another opportunity to do good to me”. The Johannine text has been quoted abusively to undercut the Church’s commitment to struggling for justice, and this has frequently been corrected by liberation theologians. Bringing in Judas as an example of concern for justice is highly unbiblical, and surely insulting to liberation theologians and to Paul VI. “This he said, not because he cared for the poor…” is how the Johannine story continues.

Archbishop Martin of Dublin seems to have some misgivings about putting Charity rather than Justice to the forefront in a social encyclical. He writes in today’s IRISH TIMES:

THE THEME of God’s love has been a focal point of the writings of Pope Benedict XVI. In his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, published last week, the pope takes up the relationship between charity and truth in the context of the social and economic realities of our world.
Some might ask should justice rather than charity not be at the heart of the church’s social doctrine? In the Christian vocabulary the word charity is not about handouts or vague benevolence.
“Charity is at the heart of the church’s social doctrine – every responsibility, and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine, is derived from charity, which according to the teaching of Jesus is the synthesis of the entire law” (n.2).
Justice prompts us to offer others what is due to them. For Pope Benedict, charity goes beyond justice, “because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other . . . Charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving” (n.6).
Christian charity is about gratuitousness, a giving not just of things and ideas but of self, without any of the price tags or packaged portions typical of consumer society. Christian charity is the counterbalance to a consumerist and utilitarian way of life.
What have charity and gratuitousness to say to the realities and mechanisms of economic life?
What has a papal encyclical, which is primarily a religious document, to say about the mechanics of economic and social development? The encyclical does not as such present fixed recipes for development. It draws inspiration from an understanding of a God who is love and who shares his life with us.
What might be the place of the idea of sharing in today’s competitive, market and profit-driven economy? The encyclical recognises the irreplaceable role of the market but notes that “without an internal form of solidarity and mutual trust the market cannot fulfil its proper economic function”.
The economy serves the common good but economic growth on its own will never respond to all the needs of social development. Development needs both economic growth and solidarity.
But the originality of the encyclical is in how it explores ways of illustrating that economic growth and solidarity are not two totally parallel tracks: “solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity and not only outside or after it”.
Pope Benedict takes up the concept of integral development as set out by Pope Paul VI 40 years ago: development of every person and of the whole person. There cannot be holistic development unless we address the spiritual and moral dimensions of the theme. Justice can only be attained by people who live justly.
Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the common good.
The sharing of goods, from which authentic development proceeds is not guaranteed by merely technical progress of relations of utility but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good.
This requires “a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise” (n.40) since “investment always has a moral as well as an economic significance”.
In a wide-ranging reflection, the encyclical addresses many of the aspects of our current world order and especially the challenges of globalisation which the pope describes as “the explosion of worldwide interdependence”.
A section addresses the role of migrants noting that “no country can be expected to address today’s problems of migration on its own”, but clearly reminds that migrant workers “cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce. They must not be treated like any other factor of production. Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance” (n.62).
The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued today is the human person in his or her integrity. The pope expresses his anxiety about “a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitiveness in the global market” (n.25). He stresses “the priority of the goal of access to steady employment for everyone” (n.32.) He notes the continuous call of the church’s teaching to the importance of workers organisations.

Spirit, “You can always do good to the poor, but you won’t have another opportunity to do good to me” makes no sense unless the poor will always be with us. If He had said “at some other time” instead of “always” your point would have merit. But He apparently didn’t, and your argument thus doesn’t.

I will point out that the last argument between the “spirits” is really fruitless, since it is impossible to deny that Jesus put a very high priority on giving away one’s possessions. If we use the line (however understood) as an excuse to ignore service to the poor, we are rejecting Jesus and rejecting church teaching.

Even if we need not pit justice and charity against one another, it is an important point that “charity” is an easily misunderstood term in our society. If some media outlet says, “Pope teaches that charity is at the heart of Christian teaching,” I imagine many people think, “well, duh, I go to the soup kitchen every week.”

… it is an important point that “charity” is an easily misunderstood term in our society. If some media outlet says, “Pope teaches that charity is at the heart of Christian teaching,” I imagine many people think, “well, duh, I go to the soup kitchen every week.”

Exactly! Which is why I think the frequent use of “charity” rather than “love” to translate the Latin caritas was so unfortunate …

Charity is easily misunderstood in our society, but love isn’t? Of the two I think that love has a wider range of misunderstanding. And justice is also misunderstood. Hopefully those of us discussing this encyclical have the correct understandings and it will be our task to help convey this to our society as a whole.

In reply to some of the comments on Pope Benedict’s treatment of charity versus justice in section 6, I would say that we should not find fault with striving to merely achieve justice in the world, which, as he says, is the “minimum measure” of charity. To this end, I hope everyone acknowledges the International Bill of Human Rights ratified by the United Nations. The Magna Carta was an early example of the pursuit of justice; the U.S. Bill of Rights is a more refined and substantive attestation to justice, but the U. N. document is a far more complete platform to uphold the realization of charity in our complex world. Ignoring the obvious problem with abortion and reproductive rights, to me at least, a full and sincere de facto adoption of most statements of the U.N. Bill of Rights by all world governments would certainly set the stage for charity in truth.

Section 9 introduces some very important thoughts. Globalization is an effect of marketing, which is inherent in capitalism, while charity
falls far behind in this activity; and thus the co-mingling we now have is not “a genuine coming-together”, to use the pope’s own words. So how do we insert charity into the market economy which
is tying the world together in generally very vapid and non-spiritual ways.

““You can always do good to the poor, but you won’t have another opportunity to do good to me” makes no sense unless the poor will always be with us. If He had said “at some other time” instead of “always” your point would have merit. But He apparently didn’t, and your argument thus doesn’t.”

“pantote echete” is not exactly “you always have” but “you have at all times”. There is no reference to the long stretch of past or future time but only to present occasions.

Example: “I want to see the Chaplin movie” “No, come to hear Maria sing, you can always see Chaplin but you won’t easily find a chance to hear Maria again”.

The narrative context shows that this is the way Jesus is speaking; he is not making a fatalistic prediction about the eternity of poverty — indeed such a topic would be very remote from the circle of ideas in John’s Gospel as well as from the narrative context of this particular passage.

To say that Jesus teaches that poverty can never be eliminated, or that war can never be eliminated, is to change him into a fatalist. People used to argue that slavery could never be eliminated because St Paul urged slaves to obey their masters.

“I am with you always until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20)does not have ‘pantote’ but ‘pasas tas hemeras’, all the days. ‘Pantote’ would be too weak.

Other occurrences of ‘pantote’ include Lk 15:31, ‘Child you are always with me’; I Thess 1:2 and Philippians 1:4 ‘always remembering you in my prayers” — again the meaning is not ‘forever’ but ‘at all times’. The word ‘pan’ means all and ‘tote’ means ‘at that time, then’, so the meaning of this late Greek word is clear: ‘at all times’ ‘on all present occasions’. To make the Johannine verse mean that the poor will be with us forever, right through history, is a mistranslation. There is nothing postmodernist about pointing this out.

Just a wee, not-so-brief addition to the intro thread, in preparation for the long haul though the whole document (having read the thing in the Pope’s original German also)
some of our comprehension difficulties can be laid at the feet of translation “tastes” or inconsistencies (I won’t be so rude as to term them incoherences, cause then I’d be critiquing the Church’s Teaching intended for my ears in my language, and that’s not permissible). Folks elsewhere have identified a ” literature” problem in the text, ie how does one express poetically the force and majesty of the glory of God? Some even attribute multiple “voices” but I cannot attest that fault in the original German, where the personable active voice “jede ist sein Gluckes Schmeid” prevails against the dull, rather academic and passive voice asserted in the English translation. Would be interesting to see what Italian or French commentators make of the material with their traditional and cultural polemic.

While centered on the Gospel values of Christ’s humbling himself to live incarnately amonst us, the Church’s social doctrine is but a part of its sacramental Trinitarian doctrine. The new encyclical goes a great deal deeper into how that is lived out than Paul VI did 40 years ago, or even John Paul II did with his transmission of the good news up to and including the new Millenium. One can see the contemporary hullabaloo surrounding “millenium development goals” as an apogee of the Paul VI era of man-on-the-moon exceptionalism (whereby we “rich” ‘developed’ folks assist the “poor” ‘barbarian’ folks by spreading democracy) crowned in glory with the climactic Kyoto “breathing space” of greenhouse gas “banking.” God must be shaking his head in incredulity: Dolts! I don’t create the world for you to speculate in ‘ruach,’ I sent you the Advocate that you might become inspired stewards of it!

Nevertheless, notwithstanding the dense verbiage, there’s a lot of literate constructs in triplicate for the discerning mind to engage the trinitarian theology being explicated in the lengthy reflections contained herein. However they often are not internally consistent in their use of terms from other Church teachings. Here’s one example in clear German first, then the rather less clear English:

“As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God’s charity and to weave networks of charity.”

Which is incoherent when read In “theology of the body” lingo: to objectify is to abuse, to treat someone as an instrument a mere love-object (ie. the opposite of ‘to love’ is not ‘to hate’ but ‘to use’, to be indifferent to. Hate engages the subject hated, a “user” remains distant by “objectifying”)

Here’s my loose take on an latic-slavic-teutonic — our Bavarian pope cohering to the ghost of his Polish and Italian predecessors — interpretation aka “reading” the words like one plays music:

“As recipients of God’s love, human persons are endowed as receptacles of love of neighbor, and called to become implements of Grace to spread God’s love, knotting networks of neighborly love.”

Colonial Pennsylvanians had a term for it – they called it “spooning” [in jest].

The official anglophonic interpretation runs the risk of a certain anglophonic bias in the (formerly American-episcopally led) Department in the Vatican responsible for publishing the Church’s edicts in English. It would be very helpful if the dicastery in charge of Catholic Education served as a kind of Auditor, and put their heads together and came up with a phrase-book of catechetical terms in columnar format: alphabetical by Latin coinage, followed by AAS citation (where first published in Acta Apostoles Sedes) and the given tongue translated. Could be a veritable tower of Babel laid low, ie horizontally extended, but would be a wonderful internet resource for “men and women of good will” invited to acknowledge, participate with, nay even reciprocate amidst, the Christian worldview.

Note my ” literate” attempt to use economical exchange terms that evoke the Divine Economy of Gratuity: “recipient” would be the term on a check for the person you write the check out to, to “endow” is to provide for existential needs by means of a thing of value inherited at a persons passing. Catholics have been endowed the Church”s sacramental graces ever since Christ’s death on the Cross, as checkbook recipients our liabilities can never again exceed our infinite asset of gratuitous Grace – the deposit of faith’s liquidity is never unrequited (insolvent) unlike the FIAT currencies at root of the global crisis. God’s love is as Good as Gold (as true as all earthly splendour) but there’s no credit cards or on-line banking: its a cash and carry incarnate economy, labor exerted into real materials renders productive fruits of the ingenuity invested. The Fed’s easy money policy, inflating bubbles of “»Verheißungen, die doch nur Gaukler einer
Traumwelt sind«,[38] gründen ihre eigenen Vorschläge immer auf die
Leugnung der transzendenten Dimension der Entwicklung, in der
Sicherheit, daß diese ihnen ganz zur Verfügung steht”

anglophoned thusly:The “types of messianism which give promises but create illusions”38 always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal.

is evidence of the Pope’s prophetic perspicacity that Americans are much in need of…
(17, cited in Chapter 1, see next post)
closer to the spirit I sense it this” “>> enticements, that indeed are but conjugers of a world of dreams << grounds, for which their own suggestions always deny the transcendent perspective of change(*), in the assurance that outcomes are completely under their control.”

God can chose a good or bad “trancendent” outcomes, ’tis presumption to contemplate only that which we want is what is good for us, or that that which we want is a good thing when ’tis a bad thing (Hiroshima mon amour).